Five albums in and deathcore destructors Whitechapel hit us hard and heavily with an album that in reality should be better than this judging by the credentials and history on offer. As it turns out “Our Endless War” is a rather pedestrian album preferring to inundate the listener with a barrage of breakdowns that infest every tune like a plague, which may be sufficient in the live environment but for the paying public more is definitely needed. Albums like this annoy the hell out of me, not because it’s deathcore, before you state cynically, but more to do with what else could have been done to make the album stand out above its competitors and though Whitechapel has been around for about a decade now and knocked out some decent albums this one just seems a little off centre of what it should be.
The obligatory intro does nothing to add any form of anticipation for the bombardment of kick drum thunder and down tuned devastation that follows with the title track. Riffing wise it’s well worn territory with macho chugging thuggery and bellowed vocals and a copious deluge of rhythmic double kick to add power to the songs. As formulaic as this might be “Mono” does offer some harmonising guitar work that has promise only to be brushed aside in favour of something safer, i.e. the breakdown. There is an overriding slowness to the pace of the songs with the djent like pulverising being ear friendly and will obviously go down well live with the deathcore fans able to kung fu to their hearts delight at virtually every tune this album has to offer. I couldn’t find anything to wax on lyrically about the album that is actually beyond being good or average with only “Diggs Road” being able to stand up by its tattooed neck as being anything creatively different than template based deathcore, with its melodic driven guitar work and is more like melodic death metal than deathcore. A couple of bonus tracks are available on the first editions it seems which in reality only extend the album by five minutes or so rather than give the listener anything new to listen to. Disappointing overall it is likely that this will still appeal very heavily to the deathcore fraternity in droves.
6/10 (Martin Harris)
Leave a Reply